"Note that above statistic uses gut feeling from a selected sample group (me) as data source. "
lol :-)

wow, already indexed...

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/7292/38421912qh5.jpg

One of the most stupid posts on this blog I've ever seen.

Nothing like making up your own stories. What a completely useless post.

Hey Philipp, can you check to see if the above posts are from Alexa HQ! :)

Philipp, this is a rather strange post, you've got to admit?! Is it actually based on anything but your own site?

Anyhow. Alexa is *****.

Got to agree with some other posters... is this some kind of joke or something? Deliberate sabotage? A misguided post out of tiredness or inebriation?

Perhaps it is the set up for some big reveal, a study about the effects of inaccuracy in blogs or something.

To understand the post you need to know about Alexa statistics, which are frequently relied on in online discussions. Some pointers and a screenshot:

http://slashdot.org/articles/07/07/23/152243.shtml
http://norvig.com/logs-alexa.html
http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/utilities/alexa/
http://forums.seochat.com/alexa-ranking-49/some-examples-of-the-lack-of-accuracy-of-alexa-9155.html
http://www.cyber-knowledge.net/blog/2006/10/19/alexa-amazons-most-flawed-idea/

http://blogoscoped.com/files/alexa-sample.png

I personally thought Phiilipp's post was pretty darn accurate (and funny) as it pretty much nails how many people feel about Alexa data accuracy. The "Blogoscoped toolbar" was a nice touch too! ;-)

In case you really care about the inaccurate Alexa ranking, just add "redirect.alexa.com/redirect?" before each URLs on your site. Example: redirect.alexa.com/redirect?google.com

Dear Phiilipp,

Alexa is dead for sometime as you wrote. But you must understand that some of major SEO companies (in Israel for example) tell lies to their clients for several years now regarding the Alexa factor.

It'll take another year/Google new product until most of the sites owners will become familiar with the fact that Alexa is nothing to be worried about.

If you're rank is low – you can overlook or pay to bust is up. If it's high, it means nothing or the site has already paid for busting it's rank up.

TheRaveN 2.0

I do agree with RaveN and Philipp. Most webmasters asked or emailed their users to download alexa toolbar. Of course Alexa data collection is due for this toolbar but what about the rest of the Internet users who doesnt have Alexa Toolbar. Probably, when Google Analytics get into each single website, a more general traffic rank can see the light. Or you just have to rely on some ISP, comscore, hitwise data.

Gotta think the column detractors have some vested interested in people paying attention to Alexa. Otherwise, why the viciousness of the comments?

So, to follow-up (because it's starting to become misunderstood in other places), yes this was a satirical post. If you thought the chart was completely useless, I couldn't agree more; it being impressive looking but ultimately useless due to its data source – which was disclosed in the post – was the intent of the post. (I added a small "Satire Alert" update on top.)

TechCrunch has an article about how Alexa data is useless.

<< We’ve gotten a few “tips” that YouTube has actually grown larger than Google in terms of page views according to Alexa.

This is, of course, complete fiction. And it shows just how useless Alexa has become as a method for measuring web traffic and reach. Comscore tells a much different (and more accurate) story – Google is nearing 100 billion monthly page views; YouTube sees around 16 billion. >>

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/13/alexa-says-youtube-is-now-bigger-than-google-theyre-wrong/

Some advertisers, including some of the big agencies, look pretty much exclusively at Alexa rankings.

I think it's good that Techcrunch shouts this out again, because I think a lot of the big players, and those responsible for investing into startups, look at that blog.